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To achieve the glowing white screens that dominate these photographs of American drive-in cinemas, Sugimoto used extraordinarily long exposures lasting exactly the duration of the movie shown there. Captured in real time, the movie is reduced to a blank screen. This ‘presence through absence’ is a common theme in Sugimoto’s work. The light emanating from the screen illuminates the immediate surroundings against the night sky, in which the trajectories of passing aircraft are clearly visible.